Intellect - Custodian.

We have seen that all the activities are carried by 5 senses to mind and mind accordingly has various inputs and hence depending on the inputs creates desire(s). Now these desire are to be fulfilled and some of them are so intense that actions thereafter are inevitable. Most of the times this happens and unknowingly we start creating programs or routines simply because of that. These desires can be a temporary affair or relatively permanent. And yet many times we ourselves feel why we doing this or why we into this schedule or why we are in this company? We also do retrospection but it doesn't last because we haven't changed either the routine or the inputs what we are receiving. Almost 99% of our activities are mechanical because of that. We also resist change (say 95%) or we like changes and always newness (signs of unstable mind or untrained mind) this also means we are in intial stage (ghrut analogy: where milk is the day to day experiences, we have to consume milk everyday (experiences) but we aren't accumulating knowledge/wisdom cream and thats why we constantly need changes) and also resistance to change means we have climbed one step(Ghrut analogy: we have accumulated cream but are not ready to churn for higher goals that is butter).

The question in mind will come then don't we use brains and what then if we are so mechanical would be differences in animals and we as humans. Well the answer is no, there is absolutely no difference. Awkward, but true. Animals can be and are trained, similarly humans are trained. Only the difference probably would be we are better trained or can be better trained. But there is also one difference animals don't have desires so eventually it evens out. Are we suggesting the depressing side, this is very shocking and so on would be reactions in mind, also there can be a thought this writting is all bogus and this person is insane..... well actually this brings to our topic, the Intellect.

By intellect we are not suggesting (IQ = intelligence Quotient or brilliancy) but role of intellect in our life. As we know majority of our actions or activities are desire driven. So lets go to the inputs again; we hear ( we are using hearing as a meronymy) good or bad so this input will create wonders in our mind, isn't it. This input will further escalate our emotions depending on its nature and intensity. Now because this falls in mind domain the person gives way to emotions or reaction to the input. Surprisingly intellect is not involved in this activity. For example we watch the movie and the emotions displayed (created by writer, director and shown by actor or situation) are felt by us (may be limited to that situation or during the hours) so we cry or laugh and yet when we leave the theatre we only remember the movie and forget the emotions because then the intellect tell us that we are no more in that situation, but because while viewing the movie intellect was absent we faltered to emotions. So similarly many of our situations in life we face trauma of miseries just because in those situations intellect not called for or just not present. They give us a rope snake analogy, where suppose in a dark you have stepped on a snake you are naturally frightened and start to panic and do all sorts of things and then there is a beam of light where you come to know that this thing is merely a rope. So in this situation intellect was absolutely absent, naturally so!!. Similarly this is applicable to our real lives (What is real is again in question?) we have situation where our mind falters and there is a total chaos.

Therefore we should allow our intellect to intervene. All the action or activities that we do should have intellect involved. Is this difficult, well it depends. For this either you should know swadharma (duties) or you should accept what world offers to you. There is a reason for this, we do all the activities that are driven by desires so the action will leave some result which may or may not be pleasant. So the other side is we do things only for pleasantness or for fruit of action. This is the ignorance which will show us pair of opposites (joy or sorrow) but mostly we get bad part (80-20: 80% stressful conditions, 20% happiness) and therefore we get into futher emotional or delicate situations because again the mind has a negative input, isn't it. So its like a giant wheel so land up in the same place where you started from. Now if the intellect is called a. before the action or b. duriing the action, then we understand either the repurcurtions of the action or we also know that we are doing it with purpose, so therefore whatever the fruit might me is irrelavant. For example, if a karate aspirant is doing his routines, these routines may not give him black belt but in order to get to that level he should possess some pre-requisites. So therefore even if he misses a schedule or two it hardly makes difference in the final objective but skipping routines for a longer period will definately make difference. So there the intellect comes in picture, here the aspirant has to decide whether he is skipping too many or he will manage (not implusive or by mind). 

Now if the intellect starts to intervene in all the actions then the person only deos action which are his duties because then the desire driven actions are not there and also as he does what he is suppose to do the fruit of action is irrelevant. The major cause of stress or dissent or unrest is desire driven actions.

Are we suggesting that we should not have any desires we should not have any fun or luxuries and we should not enjoy, the answer to this is we should enjoy to the fullest we should have all the luxuries (they say play while you play, study while you study and enjoy while enjoying) but all these activities are first to be scanned by intellect. Intellect will always alarm us about the lurking dangers. If the action is scanned by intellect the enjoyment is to the fullest. But if all the actions taken are doing my mind ( as we always do), we face problems.

Yadgna - Sacrifice.

Well this is something tough, at least for me. As we have seen in past few sessions, all about senses, mind and intellect (we haven't discussed but as we progress I think things will get clearer). Now based on these thing we will touch delicate yet important topic of Yadgna (Sorry I don't have Devanagari fonts).
We know that the senses carry tons of information to the mind, I am not saying brain there is a reason for this. This information in raw form is pretty innocuous till the time it is processed. Say for example you had a bad day, that is life isn't but say if you post the whole blame on your boss then probably you are in trouble or say you land up in the conclusion that these things went wrong because of someone else.
So the experiences of the world are going to be pairs of opposites therefore we find pair of opposite people, because their mind have been altered with experiences. Therefore the experiences of these five senses are having no value in themselves till the time they are processed. Now it all depends how they are processed, that is why great people say you should have positive attitude, by this they mean gain the experience where you can learn in right way.
This brings to our topic Yadgna, this is slightly boring, if you have seen the ritual of yadgna, om indraya swaha, indraya idanna mama. They say "This is for indra this is not mine". Which also means that the experiences of world are not mine. Also (I don't think anybody will agree), indra means individual who as conquered his senses. So the other side is person who wants to controls over senses should leave experiences (idanna mama - not mine). So are we suggesting that person should be mute, deaf and blind to the experiences? No not at all.
There we come to what is required in Yagna,
You require
- Firewood (Samidha)
Ideally dried firewood of five different trees are taken. So five also means senses. Dried means devoid of life or doesn't involve in life.

- Ghrut (Cow Ghee, well !!)
Well again this is my favorite and top class thing. Ghrut starts its journey from milk which we consume daily (in some form or other) so this milk means daily experiences of mind. Then as we keep the milk the next day you have cream over it. So which means we gather wisdom out of it and as we know cream floats above milk so wisdom floats above the petty and small things (experiences of life) or the other side is wise men are above mediocre people. And also cream was in the milk which floated above so the experiences are all there wisdom is a scarcity and floats above. Then this cream is mixed with curd for settling (i don't know whether is term is correct). which means this acquired wisdom, knowledge has to be preserved. The the process of churning this curd consisting of cream which results in butter. Now this means that whatever we have gathered has to be churned, thoughts churning is inevitable in any process.
- This is my favorite example, a chess player he thinks during the game and then finishes his game. After the game is finished he just plays the moves again to see how the game has progressed (settling cream with curd), then after the tournament is finished goes back to his library and refers annotated games with similar positions so in fact churning process and he gets navneet (butter) and yet he has to testify this result or analysis or thought process, so that brings us to ghrut which means burning butter with heat or testifying your thoughts with intellect ( here the example is heat, intense heat) so rigours research.

So this is entire thing for Ghrut

- Chanting mantra & performing rituals
Now this is again interesting, (for many people boring though) as we saw mind is responsible for actions, so doing actions with right thoughts (they call attitude these days) is also an objective for yagna.

Now we see the relevance, as we are doing yagna we are burning firewood (five senses) adding ghee (the entire process of ghrut) and taking action (chanting mantra and doing rituals). If you see any person who has evolved he does exactly what we have mentioned above. He sacrifices his senses, purifies his mind (may be to the limited domain) and does his action with a fixed objective in mind.

Mind - The door

We have mentioned that the mind is reflection of senses, mind is also the door to the world. We know the term - "Open minded" where we related the person who is open to new ideas, thoughts etc. So the mind is good door to the world. There are however few things done before we have openmindedness, because mind takes everything the intellect of the person should be very sharp (alert) otherwise the world will manipulate you by offering the opposite pairs of experiences and then the person get confused with everything. We often find open-minded people though very popular are inside facing more miseries.

 

Introvert person has less miseries or rather manages miseries well. The reason for that is introvert person looks inside more than the world, I am not saying that the person should not be broadminded or openminded but what would like to suggest is that the person should be more (alert) in that case. The person who analysis all the events in this manner could hardly get manipulated with the worlds experiences. The person selectively registers what he want and rest all goes unregistered.

 

Mind also is responsible for actions therefore the side is also important, many times we find many people are very busy with activities and yet they don't achieve anything significant in life. There are many people in that contemplative stage they don't seem to do anything and yet they are full of actions. Because mind can get manipulated so does the actions of the person and therefore the person reaction to the situation differs and also person to person. The same person reacts differently to the same situation because his past experience has taught him something different. And past experience means worlds presentation to the mind. Most often, in these cases intellect is absent.

 

Mostly all our actions are done my mind and therefore we continue to repeat the same things all over throughout our lives, and learning curve is not that fast. We often find people having same environment for years together. Rich men continue to get richer and poor continue to get poorer. This is because constantly we get same environment and therefore the thoughts are same and the mind remains the same and we never grow or we never change our mind.

 

That is the reason why many people are advised change either in the environment or city or the company. We many times see that the person just changes his house and suddenly his luck or circumstances get changed. This is the precise reason why this fluke happens, but deeply we can know that when his environment changes, unknowingly mind is given different sets of inputs and hence his decision making becomes different and hence the results. There are many such techniques where actually the person is supposed to break is routine and do something else this is given some spiritual background like for example astrologist tell to visit temple or do something, so eventually the person is brought to entirely a different set of conditions which he has never followed or done and thence accumulate something which is beneficial for him and therefore his thought process and hence the result.

 

This is a very deep rooted philosophy and has to be delicately handled the reason for that is many spurious people take advantage resulting in loss of reputation.

Concept of BMI - Body, Mind and Intellect.

[The below is text-bookish]

Well we know the concept of mind and the senses, we actually operate at four levels i.e. body, mind, intelligence & soul (Atma) first three are the things which are relatively easy to explain, Atma is most difficult to explain or rather atma cannot be explained it has to be just realized by experience of self-realized person.

 

Well we find that body is very easy to understand children also know it and everybody know what a body is all about. Mind the seat of emotions is slightly difficult to understand as with all of our experiences it is difficult to read a persons mind or his moods or emotions. We always feel that the person as responded wrongly or we have taken anything wrongly. So mind becomes more complex than the body to understand. This difficult to understand mind makes our day to day life very miserable. The reason for that is many times we don't percive things properly or the other person doesn't and that causes all the chaos. Mind the seat of emotions and also holder of desires makes all the actions so complex that even the person in himself doesn't understand the mechanism of mind and lands in things which he should have been avoiding normally, and that is the reason why a neutral person or a third person perceive things quite differently than the person himself.

 

Further when we go at intellectual level the things will be still more complex to handle or understand. If we taken examples of the mathematical symbols or the noble laureate's papers we hardly can figure out what it is all about, though roughly they and we operate at the same level of intellectual exertion. Again chess players who think (intellectually) are also applying the same thing and hence it become very tough to understand intellect.

 

Therefore as we move from body to intellect things become tougher to understand and therefore all the people, (mostly) try to operate at the body(physical level) because that is the most simple and ease way to operate. We also find that there are very few noble laureates. This we find everywhere, we have 8 directors in a company but 15,000+ employees in the company, we find only few getting 65% or 75% plus in classroom and so and so forth.

 

Let us reverse the situation, intellectual person will always go beyond body and mind to accomplish his intellectual goals a common example we can see is a person preparing for IIT's or IIM's or for that matter board's exam will sacrifice his emotions by not watching tv or say not doing activities that give him pleasure (mind domain) and concentrate on studying, will also sacrifice body as in case will eat less or will sleep less (body domain) and will try to achieve what he has fixed. The same is the case with scientists, noble laureates etc. and even workholics. Here because the activity falls in intellectual domain mind and body is absent or we can say these two are just for mediation for mind. This is the second highest level of activity the person can do, first offcourse is self-realization (which actually takes a lot of toll).

 

When we look at the mind level the activities which are related to emotions and desire we generally find that intellect is absent a common example would watching television for entertainment so eventually we watching things which are shown to us for having fun there we are gaining a minimal knowledge but using mind and sacrificing body. We also find gamblers with the same level they keep on gambling till they lose or till the drop, sacrificing body and offcourse intellect is absent. So all the mind related activities will sacrifice body and would use intellect to the minimal. There are numerous such examples to illustrate all that.

 

We then come to physical level where actually both mind and intellect are absent we breathe, we see and there are many other things we do are just things where the mind and intellect in not involved and that is the reason actually we do those things very well. We are never taught breathing neither we are taught for thirst or sleep. So this is the simplest level to operate. And that is the reason why many of us struggle.

Mind - Reflection of senses.

We have two tools one is mind and the second is the intellect. Mind is double edged-sword it can create wonder and also it can cause debacle. In case of self-realized person mind is absent. I wrote this just to surprise that if mind is absent then what must be the thought process and if there is no pondering mind then what?

 

We just caught in wrong puzzle, the probable answer in my mind is when we are engaged in some activity we forget either the past or future we are just occupied in the present situation or to be exact in words current work. We are only pondering or the mind ponders when there is no work or the mind is not occupied. The more we are in the work or occupied there is possibility of mind pondering. So in a sense mind in self-realised person being absent also would mean that pondering mind.

 

We see that chess players irrespective of their level they concentrate very hard, they have certain plan and therefore their mind (focus) is on the play at that time you ask any chess player we will be more interested in the move to be played and less interested in his personal issues. This also indicates mind more consumed on the task and therefore probably self-realized person would with his intellect try to engage his mind in particular task, probably spiritual development or spiritual developed person does not need mind to perform any task.

 

Anyways we are into something that is not yet known, the mind is representative of senses. Mind also reflects how the person has evolved either spiritually or otherwise. Mind is formed by what the world offers to you. The world enters through five senses and hits the mind. A person feels happy if the world gives him what he wants and vice-versa. So the mind can be controlled by sense objects, this is difficult to understand but true.

 

Actually there is/was a tactic extensively used by germans to brain-wash an enemy to the extent that the same person used to fight against his/her own nation. [I am sorry don't want to hurt anybody's sentiments for feelings, this just an example.]. So actually what they used, they used all the sense object to control the mind of the person.

 

Therefore what we can conclude out of all that is mind represents all the senses and sense object that we are in touch with. Therefore what we generally say is sanskar, a person with good sanskar (good nurture) has being brought up in such a way that his mind is good in general. We all know, "The man is known by the company he keeps". Therefore the communication of world with the help of senses makes the mind (in general) to the level that what all the person has in his mind is all reflection of what he has suffered or enjoyed and that is beyond his karma (scope of karma) and also known as prarabdha, where intellect is absent.

 

We may get depressed by the above reading and yet I mentioned it as powerful tool earlier.

 

It is a tool because if it is trained well it can perform wonders. Actually as we know that mind constitutes what world offers to you. The same analogy can apply if we want to restructure mind. That means if we are in the envoirment where we are in, if we can change that we can change wour mind or atleast guard against debacle. My mother always used to tell me, "It is better to be illiterate, than be literate and do nothing about yourself".

 

That is where education and other things come in picture. The more educated (in real sense) we are the more it is to train our mind or restructure the same. The reason for that is while taking knowledge or education we are actually training our mind for helping it to help us. The mind as we all know is also responsible for communicating back to the world. So if the mind is better the communication is still bettter.

 

The mind also main factor in doing karma [work and action, although it is different and needs some other treatment] and therefore if mind has a better hold then the action or work will be more enhanced and better outcome is expected out of it. We haven't touched the topic of changing mind and the behaviour that we will be definately touching on in sessions to come. We have just touched what is mind and what is what.

 

 

Seven stages of information.

We know very well about the sense objects. The list is as follows:
1. Eye
2. Nose
3. Tongue
4. Ear
5. Skin (Sense of touch)

These are the five centers from where we receive the information. The information may be correct or wrong it depends on the envoirment. That the reason why elderly people advice good company and also "Man is known by the company he keeps". Because then the information through the above sources is relatively safe or we can say the information exchanged is health one.

We often find people with their existing surrounding quite happy with that. The reason for that is the through the years getting the same level of information and hence they start to relate everything on what the inputs they get continously. There is a common experience - Baby elephant is tied properly and then torchered continuously for few days, he tries to get out of the situation but does not succeed and then gets quite, after this stage is passed and he grows big, the elephant is tied with a simple chain which the elephant can break with ease but this doesn't happen the reason for that is past experience tells elephant that he cannot break the chain with which he is tied.

Similarly the information which we get through these five channels is very important and can change our personality and also life. These five channels constantly hammer tons of information to us creating a lot much chaos than we can expect. One mode in itself is strong enough to ruin our lives. Therefore you require a good company. (I will not here elaborate on what is good and what is bad company may be in future)

Fortunately enough we have two most powerful tool of processing the information one is mind (mind in self realised person is absent, we are not self-realized people and also self realized people do not get bothered with outside events they are happy in within) and the other is intellect. Though these are the most powerful things yet these are less exercised.

As I wrote earlier that mind is absent for self-realised person but still as aspirant or as we are in process of thinking we are mentioning mind. Surprisingly, intellect is absent in those who haven't attained self realization. Funny but true. The reason for that is we are clouded many desires (mind domain) where actually we cannot think in right spirit hence intellect is absent (or supressed by mind). And actually it should be vice-versan mind absent and intellect present.

Many systems have been developed just to control mind or atleast train mind to be selective and also make intellect stronger. Some call meditation, others take counselling from professionals, many people join laughter clubs and so on. These activities either involve more intellect or lessen the force of mind.

The another way to look at it is that these systems utilize the two tools in effective manner so that the information is properly processed and the events outside are properly judged. The information from all channels has to be scrutinized selectively inorder not to fall in some false circle. There are many such traps which we actually fall in and then find it very difficult to get out of that.

Samadarshina - Equality of vision.

Many things of what we view is because of prejudice mind or we are not trained to look beyond the obvious. There is a state called as "Samadarshina" where actually you view your rival, opponent or competitor as your friend. This state is very difficult to achieve but if you look in proper perspective it is true.
The another side of this state is to view millionaire and not so well with similarity. This is again very difficult for the reasons that we view the world with differentiation or atleast with some reservations.
Well that is what we would like to go for, a question may arise in our mind why we want to go for such as state, the answer can be like this; whenever we had experience where we felt that if we would have extra intelligence, money or power the other person would have treated us better. So turning the sides, we should treat a person in equality so that probably he does feel what we had felt at some point.
The above is just the example of what samadarshina would do, actually it goes beyond all that. Hence we would like to practise to reach the state of samadarshina.

State of mind - Equality in all situations

Many distinguished speakers, philosophers, thinkers have already spoken a lot about it. And it is something if I say about it again then it would be mere copy of all that.
I will just write what comes to my mind, may be wrong. During situations good or bad we (I) tend to think about the result which has come at our end. Depending on the result we see it as good or bad. Probably that it the reason why Krishna said work as swadharma and not for the fruit of action. It can be either good or bad. This is ok. BUT The problems lies when actually we go through the situation, in the hind side it is always wise to say that we should be calm not bothered by situation, be objective, take things in right perspective etc., but still we always struggle while handling the situation.

This is probably because our mind is not trained in that way, probably (don't know) or probably we don't want unpleasant things to happen. So effectively you again land on the fruit of action theory. Where actually you are expect to get good results but you have bad ends.

But what about the things you haven't done and get bad results. So you get output in which you haven't spend anything. There is a case.

Anyways I will ponder on this and see if I get some answers in retrospection.

Preface.

I think there should be a space where actually we should be writing our views and let other people know about it. Well I am not great thinker but think myself as some novice thinker or just to try things about me and the state of mind.
It can also happen that the thoughts are contradictory depending on the situation (they shouldn't be as per gita's state of Sthithapranya) but that is what is to be seen as the fun part of it.
Many a times it also happens that as the years progress we become entire a different person than what we were. So I hope that this will be journey to be watched and seen.